


The Imperial Bower

by cross



Category: Persona 2
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, False Memories, Gen, Pre-Canon, Repressed Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:18:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cross/pseuds/cross
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The empty chest in Mt. Iwato; or how Jun Kurosu became burdened with false memories that twisted him into a monster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Imperial Bower

**Author's Note:**

> For a long time I've wanted to write about the process of Jun regaining his memories before the others. Hopefully this will become part of a small series. Thank you Amanda for the beta!

            Among the several disadvantages to having a broken family was splitting time between both parents. Some kids would have thought Jun lucky for never having to choose, for never having to listen to telephone shouting matches over custody this and visitation that. In fact, Junko Kurosu's appearances at her son's small and disturbingly tidy apartment were as undesirable as they were rare, which made it that much easier for his father to visit at his whim. The man who called himself Akinari Kashihara had a curious habit of showing up at his son's doorstep whenever Jun desired it, with no more than a mere passing thought, as if he somehow knew when his son needed him, and he would vanish again when his work was done. Lately he'd taken to visiting whether he was on Jun's mind or not, to share his wisdom with him, to be the cool dad Jun yearned for, to rub a little more grease on the wheels.

            Jun didn't complain, despite his father's imperious and sometimes unsettling presence. It was a comfort to think that despite his mistakes as a child the man still loved him, and that there was more he could do to prove it—like listen to his theories and share them with the world before it was too late. The weak hearted man he'd once called father was dead and gone (figuratively, more than literally, as far as Jun was concerned) and he now had a father to be envied and admired, that no one would mock, and especially not to Jun's face, delinquent that he was.

            A phantom of a father brought to life by rumors did nothing to cure Jun's chronic loneliness, but it was that very loneliness the phantom sought to exploit; it was to be harnessed as a weapon, to prove to the world (to _him_ ) that all humans despair as much as this one young man, whose endless suffering was sweet nectar to the thousand-faced malevolent entity’s bee.          

            "Don't you remember," Jun's father said in his deceptive and gentle voice, "how that boy made you cry?" Akinari Kashihara's eyes flashed and he slapped a Polaroid down on the table before his son—a candid shot of a tall and handsome student in a Seven Sisters High uniform, walking out of Sevens's front gates with his gym bag slung over his shoulder and a listless gaze. His hand drifted to Jun's shoulder to give it a reassuring squeeze. "I remember, my son. It hurt me to see you so sad."

            Jun knelt at the table with his hands at rest on his knees. His grip on them tightened as his eyes narrowed at the picture on the table. The boy was familiar, like he'd seen him in a movie or dreamed of him long ago, but the search for a name to attach to the face was fruitless. He peered up at his father, shrinking back into his seat and wincing.

            "I'm sorry, Dad," he said. "I don't remember him... At least, I don't think I do."

            "You don't _think_ you do." Kashihara frowned. "But you know his face, don't you?"

            Jun nodded, biting his lip. _How could I not,_ he thought, _when it resembles my own?_ He watched as his father let out a heaving sigh and strode away from the table to stare out the window of the tiny Kurosu "family" apartment, sidestepping the numerous potted flowers Jun had growing in the sunlight that flooded in from the balcony doors, with just enough care to not trample them under his loafers, but no more care than that. His ankle brushed the tip of a large jutting leaf and only Jun's split-second of better judgement stopped him from crying out to his father to be more careful around the plants.

            "I think you will understand if you pay a visit to Mt. Iwato, Jun."

            "Why?"

            Kashihara glowered at him over his shoulder. "You will find something important there. Don't you trust your father?"

*

            The next day, after the school bell rang, Jun took a left turn out the front gate of Kasugayama instead of a right—a motion that did not go unnoticed by the annoying underclassman who lurked outside the gates after classes with his goofy lackeys, "to keep an eye on the guys and make sure they're keepin' out of trouble". He watched Jun as he started down the sidewalk alone, and called out to him before he rounded a corner: "Heeey, S-Senpai! You okay?! You know Sevens is that way, don't you... and those guys hate our guts! A little guy like you's gotta be careful!"

            If Jun had bothered to turn around he might have seen that the Kasugayama High Boss's concern was almost as genuine as it was showy, but he kept walking as if he hadn't heard him say a word.

*

            It was true that he would pass Sevens on his way to Mt. Iwato, as he had many times before he'd been expelled, and he wondered if that was where he had seen the mysterious boy in the photo. Sevens had hundreds of students but Jun knew very few of them by face and even fewer by name, least of all those outside of his class. He attracted the stares of Sevens students as he passed, unmistakable as an enemy in his bright blue uniform and breathtaking with his effeminate looks and sharp figure. A group of second-year girls huddled around the back gates. They leaned against the brick wall with their uniform skirts hiked up above their knees (a dress code violation if Jun had ever seen one) and passing around one long cigarette, burn rolling steady and ash trickling to the cement, packed with gods only know what.

            (Not tobacco, Jun knew. Though his father had quit smoking when he was young he would never forget the smell of tobacco smoke, stinky yet nostalgic; the cloud lingering above the girls' heads was pungent and herbal.)

            The cigarette reached the lips of a white girl—the only one in sight, with startling blonde hair and bright blue eyes—and her cloudy gaze lingered on him as he passed, his eyes darting away from their shared cigarette, hiked skirts, and garish designer bags.

            " _Keh he_ , what're you staring at?" she snapped, cigarette quivering in her lips with each word. "We're busy here!"

            Anger welled up in the pit of Jun's stomach, far more than was justified for a throwaway remark from a high school girl, but he quelled it with thoughts of earning his father's pride, and regarded her with nothing more than a haughty toss of his hair as his feet carried him away from their huddle, away from Sevens, and towards the old shrine.

            "That's right, go back to Kasu and stay away!" shouted one of her friends.

            "Shut up," he heard the blonde girl say after. "He's already leaving. You guys always drag stuff out like that, and it's annoying!"

*

            Jun kept his eyes on the road ahead of him as he neared the caves. The path was west of the Araya Shrine, a place he had steadily avoided for the past several years for reasons he found himself unable to explain, save for the mysterious sick feeling and unbearable sadness that overcame him whenever he approached. "There's a ghost that haunts Araya," a classmate had once said, "the ghost of a young girl who died when it burned down ten years ago. It doesn't even matter that they rebuilt the shrine—no one will go near the thing when it's got a rumor like that around it!"

            He ignored it as he passed, as if it weren't even there, as if the only thing between Sevens and Mt. Iwato was an expanse of forest and the street lined with Sevens students, gossiping citizens, and mothers out doing their shopping.

            Two women stood near the path that led to Mt. Iwato, with their backs turned to Jun and their gazes fixed on old Honmaru Park in the distance. He paid them little mind and caught the tail end of their conversation as he strode by:

            "You really think this is the best angle we can get of the park?" said the taller woman, aiming a camera at the scenery.

            "Mizuno wanted a picture of the whole thing, right? Unless you've got a boat, Yukki... The only other place you're gonna find a better angle at is on the river, haha!"

*

            Despite a fondness for nature and walks, Jun was no outdoorsman or athlete, and it was never more apparent than when he approached the old mountain, his heeled school shoes a dire mismatch for Iwato's steep and pebbly southern ascent. He panted at the caves' entrance, and his skin prickled in the cold air seeping from the caverns and with the sinking fear of what he might find inside. Dad hadn't even told him what to be looking for.

            He dug a flashlight out of his bookbag and illuminated the path before him, valiantly ignoring the squeaks of bats and scampers of rats disturbed by the light and the discomfort that rattled him harder with each moment of stalling. Jun gathered his courage, for the sake of impressing his father and finding out the truth of the handsome boy in the photograph, and entered the caves, following the grainy path hollowed out by Sumaru citizens past.

            The path twisted and forked through the cave, but Jun's intuition steered him from dead ends and wrong turns. In the dark, every cave wall, rock formation, and pool look alike, but there was no hesitation in his steps when met with forks in the road. What felt like intuition was closer to a memory he couldn't shed from his nerves, that jerked his muscles in the right direction. When he came upon a spring he stopped for a rest, clinging to his knees and eyeing the reflection of loneliness in his pretty pale face. His feet ached and he felt lost despite how confident he had felt in getting there.

            If he turned back, would he be able to find his way out? Would anyone come looking for him if he didn't return? In a flurry of exhaustion and distress his thoughts consumed his consciousness, and he became lost in his own reflection, eyes glazing over and light dancing on the pool's surface trapping him in a trance. It was when he raised his eyes once again that he saw it: the phantom of a young girl hovered above the rippling water, a ghoul, a ghost from the past, with a middle school uniform, a boyish haircut, and eyes full of sorrow. Jun's heart lurched in his chest and he reached out as if he could grab her hand—

            And as he stuck out his hand she vanished, leaving him to wonder if he had seen anything at all. But her face was burnt into his mind and the tightness lingered in his chest long after he had pulled himself up and ventured deeper into the cave.

            Jun contemplated turning back more than once. His father's disappointment would be worth an end to this exhausting adventure—but trust in his father was what brought him here in the first place, and if he was meant to find something then he shouldn't dare to come home without it. It was frightening enough seeing (hallucinating?) a ghost and not knowing where his own feet were carrying him without imagining what Dad would say if Jun failed him yet again.

            In a half hour's gloomy journey he came face to face with a dead end, a crumbling cavern wall at the end of a narrow corridor, embellished with nothing but stray stalagmites and a filthy old chest, gaudy like a prop in a pirate film. He knew as he stooped down to wipe the dust off of its latch that this was what he had come for. It opened with a loud snap of the latch and a cloud of dust that burst in his face, and he sneezed as he fanned it all away and watched the contents of the chest reveal itself through the clearing air.

            It was a mask. It was only large enough to fit a child's face, and a cheap replica of the mask donned by his favorite _Featherman_ hero, the Black Falcon. Jun picked it up with trembling hands and brushed dirt off of the plastic face as the memories washed over him in an agonizing flood.

            The boy's name was Tatsuya Suou, and he was a killer.


End file.
